Bethesda is working on patches for Fallout: New Vegas on all platforms and says it'll have them out fast enough to make your head spin - or stop spinning, as the case may be.

By all reports, Fallout: New Vegas is a classic Obsidian RPG: Deep and engaging, with well-realized characters and a complex, multi-layered plot, that's utterly wracked with bugs ranging from the amusingly bizarre, such as the "Exorcist bug" seen here, to outright show-stoppers, like the one that turned Shamus Young's huge jackpot win into a tattered, bitter memory. It's not much of a surprise, really; Bethesda games always have their share of issues and Obsidian is infamous for its inability to deliver a stable, bug-free experience.

The fact that Bethesda is hammering out a patch, then, should also be no surprise, but it's welcome news nonetheless. "We are currently working on releasing patches/updates as quickly as possible for Fallout: New Vegas, for all platforms," the company told Gamasutra. Specific fixes weren't revealed, but "announcements regarding the patches are forthcoming."

Technical issues featured prominently in The Escapist's review of Fallout: New Vegas and ultimately held it back from a full five-star score. "It's disappointing to see such an otherwise brilliant and polished game suffer from years-old bugs, and unfortunately our review score for the game has to reflect that," Editor-in-Chief Russ Pitts wrote. "Truth be told, I enjoyed New Vegas a lot more than Fallout 3, but I can't give it a full score on the basis of the bugs alone."

Fallout: New Vegas is available now for the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Not surprising, especially since many of the bugs have been well known to Bethesdasoft since Oblivion. I guess now that reviewers have decided to actually discuss the bugs in their reviews instead of just saying "10/10 awesome game" and poenlizing the score accordingly, BS decided they finally act.

I know! It takes a perfectly mundane conversation and turns it into something out of Silent Hill. And the fact that the guy's just talking in such a normal and friendly fashion... that makes it WORSE!

I sincerely hope someone does this intentionally in a horror game, now that we've seen it.

Celtic_Kerr:How is it that people keep seeing issues in games that I simply never have? No game has ever crashed on me before. Atleast not the "Infamously bug riddled" ones... I think I'm lucky

It's fate. I know a guy who is a bug magnet. We've beta tested a few small projects together, and more than once he's got an absolutely insane error that he can consistently reproduce that we see maybe 1 in 100 times, if that. It's actually a great asset on small projects!

Why are we thanking them? People should be lighting torches and grabbing their pitchforks.

If we did that to every game company then yes. I was surprised about how buggy Reach was to be honest, it's the first Halo to be that bad.

The sad thing is that a hell of a lot of games are like this nowadays, and they get away with it because people buy them on release day before finding it out.

I agree, although considering the track-record of these two companies we should be hitting them first (and hardest).

There's not even a chance that they've missed bugs during play-tests, they're just ignoring them.

According to my friend who is a game tester (For Sega), some bugs they can't fix without a major overhaul of the game, although personally I think that's their damn problem personally, especially if they expect us to shell out full price for the damn games.

To be honest this is slightly hypocritical of me as I love Fallout games and am getting this either tomorrow or Friday (depending on if my order arrives early as it was sent yesterday).

Meh, bought it last night and have not found any issues. Altough after having extensive experiance with many of Bethesda's games I won't be surprised when I hit one. Thats ok though, the game still rocks!

Actually so far from my experience 11 hours in new vegas has far less bugs then fallout 3 did. Iv yet to encounter a single one. That bug in the video does look kind of funny and is the first problem iv actually heard about the game.

I did hear a few people complaining their dlc codes didnt work but later found out they are just idiots and dont know how to read.

Looks like I'll stick with my plan, then, and buy this over the Christmas holidays for my Xbox. By then the necessary patches will have been written and passed certification, right? (And the console version should have fewer issues caused by hardware configuration... or is that being hopelessly naive?)

Perhaps i'l buy this first after all. I really don't know whether to get this on Friday (UK) or wait till next week's Friday for Fable 3...

Bethesda aren't exactly good at fixing bugs either, even their patchs don't fix everything and sometimes create more problems. I just want the game to be playable, without the game breaking stuff and i'l be fine personally.

Why are we thanking them? People should be lighting torches and grabbing their pitchforks.

If we did that to every game company then yes. I was surprised about how buggy Reach was to be honest, it's the first Halo to be that bad.

The sad thing is that a hell of a lot of games are like this nowadays, and they get away with it because people buy them on release day before finding it out.

I agree, although considering the track-record of these two companies we should be hitting them first (and hardest).

There's not even a chance that they've missed bugs during play-tests, they're just ignoring them.

According to my friend who is a game tester (For Sega), some bugs they can't fix without a major overhaul of the game, although personally I think that's their damn problem personally, especially if they expect us to shell out full price for the damn games.

To be honest this is slightly hypocritical of me as I love Fallout games and am getting this either tomorrow or Friday (depending on if my order arrives early as it was sent yesterday).

Evidently these don't require a major overhaul if they're patching them after release.

I know! It takes a perfectly mundane conversation and turns it into something out of Silent Hill. And the fact that the guy's just talking in such a normal and friendly fashion... that makes it WORSE!

I sincerely hope someone does this intentionally in a horror game, now that we've seen it.

During the first rotation I thought it might have been a side-effect of your character just waking up from his head being blown off or something :P

Still, that's pretty funny as far as bugs go, and it figures that NV would certainly not be bug free. Still, hope it gets fixed before I buy it, which will be a while, so don't rush anything on my account :)

Why are we thanking them? People should be lighting torches and grabbing their pitchforks.

If we did that to every game company then yes. I was surprised about how buggy Reach was to be honest, it's the first Halo to be that bad.

The sad thing is that a hell of a lot of games are like this nowadays, and they get away with it because people buy them on release day before finding it out.

I agree, although considering the track-record of these two companies we should be hitting them first (and hardest).

There's not even a chance that they've missed bugs during play-tests, they're just ignoring them.

According to my friend who is a game tester (For Sega), some bugs they can't fix without a major overhaul of the game, although personally I think that's their damn problem personally, especially if they expect us to shell out full price for the damn games.

To be honest this is slightly hypocritical of me as I love Fallout games and am getting this either tomorrow or Friday (depending on if my order arrives early as it was sent yesterday).

Evidently these don't require a major overhaul if they're patching them after release.

Indeed, you do have to question some companies bug testers really, as some manage to make relatively bug-free games whereas others are known for being consistently bad. You'd think they'd learn.

Anton P. Nym:Looks like I'll stick with my plan, then, and buy this over the Christmas holidays for my Xbox. By then the necessary patches will have been written and passed certification, right? (And the console version should have fewer issues caused by hardware configuration... or is that being hopelessly naive?)

-- Steve

I wouldn't say naive, but usually hardware configuration bugs (in my experience) are spread across most of your games, not just one. That's just what I've noticed though.

I haven't had any bugs aside from physics glitches yet, and those have been few and far between. I think a lot of it is just the engine starting to show it's age, though.